A video of a South Korean YouTuber participating in Holi in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi is being shared on social media, which also shows him dressed as a pregnant woman and walking down the street.
Those sharing the video have claimed that the YouTuber had conducted a social experiment in India by pretending to be a pregnant woman, and later got sexually harassed by the people during the Holi festival.
The claim and the video criticised India, raising concerns about women's safety in the country.
The claim was also shared by Thai media outlet Thaiger.
(Archived versions of this post can be seen here, here, and here.)
But...?: The claim is misleading, as both videos were shot nearly a year apart.
The part of the video which shows him, YouTuber 'I am Sumin', dressed as a woman was shot in Bangladesh, while the other part of him celebrating Holi was shot in India.
How did we find out the truth?: One of those sharing the claim was media outlet InKhabar, which identified the Korean content creator as 'I am Sumin'.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for his YouTube channel, where we found the visuals from the claim. However, we found that they were two different videos, and did not show one incident in India.
The video was Sumin dressed as a pregnant woman was one from Bangladesh, uploaded on 11 April 2026.
The video of Sumin celebrating Holi was shot in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and was uploaded to the channel on 16 May 2025.
In this video, Sumin was dressed in regular clothing, and was not pretending to be a pregnant woman as claimed.
We then came across his Threads account, where he had shared a clarification under a now-deleted post sharing the claim.
Identifying himself as the person in the video, Sumin addressed the "misuse" of his videos, which he said were "deceptively edited to incite hostility toward a specific country."
He clarified that the video of him as a pregnant woman was filmed in Bangladesh, not India. "It is factually incorrect and misleading to use content from Bangladesh to promote anti-India sentiment."
Sumin added that in India, he appeared as himself, "nothing more, nothing less" and that he would take "necessary actions, including reporting these unauthorized and defamatory edits," to protect his intellectual property and reputation.
Conclusion: While there have been several cases of foreigner and Indian women being harassed during Holi in India, these two separate videos of a Korean content creator have been shared to falsely claim that he was sexually harassed in India when he dressed as a pregnant woman.
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